Delft
by Empatheia
Summary: [Miranda] She did it perfectly, all of it.


**A/N: **Written for **infinite-beauty** for the January round of D.gray-man flashfics.

**xoxox**

_**Delft**_

**xoxox**

Miranda was not always clumsy.

It was a cumulative effect, beginning on a day in April when she was seven years old. As days in April go, it had not really been special or different in any way but the most subtle and heartbreaking.

The plate had made a very pretty sound when it hit the floor, a tinkling chorus of shattering china that quite befitted its loveliness when it had been whole. It was a gift from her father to her mother, which was rare in and of itself, and to make it worse, the plate had been a real work of art. Mother had treasured it very much, possibly more than her daughters, but less than her son (of course).

Miranda had simply liked the pretty blue pictures.

Later, she learned that the colour's name was 'Delft' and that the plate was Dutch and valuable. Even so... even so. There is no plate in the world worth a bruise and an unkind word, but Miranda was given both for her unintended transgression. The bruise faded quickly. The word-- _clumsy_-- did not.

She was seven years old. When someone a seven year old loves, such as a respected father, tells her that she is clumsy, it tends to stick, and so it was with Miranda. She stopped asking for porcelain dolls, accepting with resigned grace that she would only break them. When she washed the dishes, she did not mind if one or two or three broke... after all, Father knew she was clumsy and would forgive her.

She might have been fine, even with that. But when the next word came along, this one harsher and crueler and more difficult to live with, it was not so simple.

"Useless!" her father raged, crushing her reddened cheek beneath his palm with a viciously timed blow.

It was not her fault. She knew that, with eleven years of wisdom behind her. Her mother's gradual descent into the grey motionless chill of death had nothing to do with her. The word was not meant for her, but for himself, for not being able to save her. Even so... even so.

_Useless_, she thought to herself in the moon-glared night. _Useless_. The word rolled over and over again in her mind, until it turned into a mantra of sorts and sank into her sleeping mind to become unassailable.

She stopped bothering to do well in school, though somewhere in the depths of her mind she suspected she might be capable of topping her class. After all, what was the point of a useless person getting high marks?

Her first job lasted three days before she lit her benefactor's kitchen on fire-- accidentally, she told him seriously, with a sad secret smile for herself-- and was thrown out. It was not a surprise. After all, she was useless. What else had they expected?

Her father died on her seventeenth birthday, but the words he'd given her did not die with him. They lingered on, like dusty mementos in the back closet that smell strange and take up space, but that cannot be thrown away for sentimental reasons. Her uselessness was proof that he had lived and been her father. How could she throw that away?

So she thought, because she was a just a little broken.

In the years that followed, she turned her uselessness into an art of sorts, a macabre portrait of misery that grew larger and more twisted with every day. She learned how to weep so that her eyes would redden, and how to frighten sleep away until her face grew haggard and thin as a much older woman's.

Miranda taught people how to hate her perfectly and fear her perfectly and never ever want to come near her.

She did it flawlessly, all of it.

Just as she'd been perfectly clumsy and perfectly useless and perfectly frightening, because that was the truth of Miranda-- a perfectionist, but a broken one.

And then... then came the Akuma, and the clock, and the family of Noah, and the Exorcists and everything they meant to her.

Then there was a boy named Allen, and he gave her new words to define herself with-- _thank you_, and _helpful_. They were strong words. If they had been people they might have been bright soldiers with sharp swords and glittering helms. Her father's words were old and powerful, but she was not really a weak person after all, so they were not powerful enough, not any more.

For them, she would be perfect again, and whole, because who would want a broken perfectionist?

She would not break things perfectly anymore. She would fix them perfectly instead. It was just another angle on the same thing, so it didn't matter much to her, but it mattered to them and that was all the reason she needed.

"Thank you, Miranda," Allen yelled over his shoulder as he ran breathlessly away.

"You're welcome," she whispered to his back, and meant every word.

After all, words have power.

**XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX**


End file.
